Walter Herrmann

Walter Herrmann (20 September 1910 – 11 August 1987) was a German nuclear physicist and mechanical engineer who was one of many German nuclear scientists in Soviet program of nuclear weapons, mainly working on the power plant technology at the Laboratory V in Russia. His father, a banker, supported his studies when he went to attend the Dresden University of Technology and graduated with engineering degree in 1937.

Career

Pre-War and Uranium Club After completing his degree in engineering, Herrmann spent several years as a research engineer at the power plant located in Böhlen and Saxony where the Auergesellschaft AG once headquartered. In January 1939, he was transferred to Dresden, and due to his expertise in thermal engineering and knowledge in head transfer mechanism, he consulted to build the experimental power station located in Espenhain.

It was at the Gottow facility that Herrmann participated in nuclear fission experiments designated G-I and G-III. The G-1 experiment had lattices of 6,800 uranium oxide cubes (about 25 tons) in the nuclear moderator paraffin. The work verified Karl Heinz Höcker's calculations that cubes were better than rods, and rods were better than plates. The G-III experiment was a small-scale design, but it generated an exceptionally high rate of neutron production. The G-III model was superior to nuclear fission chain reaction experiments that had been conducted at the KWIP in Berlin-Dahem, the University of Heidelberg, or the University of Leipzig. Herrmann also participated in work to explore the initiation of a nuclear reaction through the detonation of explosives.

Soviet program of nuclear weapons Near the close of World War II, the Soviet Union sent special search teams into Germany to locate and deport German nuclear scientists or any others who could be of use to the Soviet atomic bomb project. The Russian Alsos teams were headed by NKVD Colonel General A. P. Zavenyagin and staffed with numerous scientists, from their only nuclear laboratory, attired in NKVD officer's uniforms. In the autumn of 1945, Heinz Pose was offered the opportunity to work in the Soviet Union, which he accepted. He arrived in the Soviet Union, with his family, in February 1946. He was to establish and head Laboratory V (also known by the code name Malojaroslavets-10, after the nearby town by the same name) in Obninsk. The scientific staff at Laboratory V was to be both Soviet and German, the former being mostly political prisoners from the Gulag or exiles; this type of facility is known as a sharashka. (Laboratory B by lake Sungul was also a sharashka and working on the Soviet atomic bomb project. Notable Germans at Laboratory B were Hans-Joachim Born, Alexander Catsch, Nikolaus Riehl, and Karl Zimmer. Notable Russians from the Gulag were N. V. Timofeev-Resovskij and S. A. Voznesenskij.)

On 5 March 1946, in order to staff his laboratory, Pose and NKVD General Kravchenko, along with two other officers, went to Germany for six months to hire scientists. Additionally, Pose procured equipment from the companies AEG, Carl Zeiss AG, Schott Jena, and Mansfeld, which were in the Russian occupation zone.

F. Berkei, W. Borrmann, W. Czulius, Kurt Diebner, Georg Hartwig, K. H. Höcker, W. Herrmann, H. Pose, and Ernst Rexer Bericht über einen Würfelversuch mit Uranoxyd und Paraffin G-125 (dated before 26 November 1942) Kurt Diebner, Werner Czulius, W. Herrmann, Georg Hartwig, F. Berkei and E. Kamin Über die Neutronenvermehrung einer Anordnung aus Uranwürfeln und schwerem Wasser (G III) G-210 Kurt Diebner, Georg Hartwig, W. Herrmann, H. Westmeyer, Werner Czulius, F. Berkei, and Karl-Heinz Höcker Vorläufige Mitteilung über einen Versuch mit Uranwüfeln und schwerem Eis als Bremssubstanz G-211 (April 1943) Kurt Diebner, Georg Hartwig, W. Herrmann, H. Westmeyer, Werner Czulius, F. Gerkei, and Karl-Heinz Höcker Bericht über einen Versuch mit Würfeln aus Uran-Metall und schwerem Eis G-212 (July 1943) W. Herrmann, Georg Hartwig, H. Rockwitz, W. Trinks, and H. Schaub G-303 (1944)